“A library is a growing organism,” reads the fifth “rule” of library science as penned in 1931 by S.R. Ranganathan, widely considered to be the father of library science. In a world where “library” and “book” have taken on vast new meanings it’s the last of Ranganathan’s five guiding principles that prompts us to continuously respond to our environment and deeply interrogate the ways we curate, collect, organize, and preserve information for generations to come.
Created by Amanda Belantara & A.M. Alpin, Rule No. 5 is a collaboratively-created work that centers the voices of library workers as they reveal to listeners the magical, mysterious, complicated, and controversial world of libraries. Through six interactive sculptures, Rule No. 5 examines practices and objects that shape how we can search, who we will find, and what we remember. This interactive audio experience invites participants to open doors and drawers, plug in, and push buttons to explore and contemplate what it means to collect the world’s knowledge, preserve the past, and shape the future.
The exhibition is currently on view throughout NYU’s Bobst Library located at 70 Washington Square South in New York City’s Greenwich Village. For further information, access transcripts of the sound compositions or join a public tour, please visit www.ruleno5.org.
A.M. Alpin is an award-winning filmmaker, librarian, and scholar who uses digital and analog technology to tell compelling stories. Her work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, the Gotham/Independent Filmmaker Project, the Austin Film Society, the Southern Humanities Media Fund, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She serves as director of the Library Lab and Special Projects at NYU Libraries.
Amanda Belantara is an audiovisual artist-anthropologist and librarian. Prior to joining NYU, Belantara worked as a creative producer and teaching artist, collaborating with cultural heritage institutions in New York and the UK to create interactive audio installations, audio tours, and oral history projects. Her work incorporates sound recordings to uncover aural perspectives that are often missing from written works. She brings this to her research in library and information science, using sound to both document and communicate the social construction of library practices. She is the Instruction and Outreach Librarian for the School of Professional Studies at NYU Libraries
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